


The Kids Are Alright

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Old Age, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 23:24:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11428416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Old age is hell. Being an old spy is even worse. Jack Thompson meets someone unexpected at Peggy Carter's grave. Takes place sometime during or just after CA: Civil War.





	The Kids Are Alright

**Author's Note:**

> My genprompt_bingo card includes the square "venerable". I was really struggling with it until I realized I could just write any character being old. So I did.

Somebody once said -- Jack's not sure who, all he knows is his grandkids quote it, now that superheroes are coming out of the woodwork all over the planet -- that you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

He thinks it sounds like something a dumbass kid would say. Something he might've spouted, once upon a time.

The truth is, there are no heroes and villains, not like that, no matter what color costumes they wear. The truth is, everyone is a little of both, and there are people who do good things for terrible reasons, and people who do terrible things for terrible reasons, but half the world thinks they're really heroes because if not for that, how would they ever have the chance to become villains?

The truth is, you either die young or you outlive all your friends. That's all.

And if you do somehow, against all odds, make it to a ridiculous old age, there's no trophy for that, no medals. All that happens is, every part of your body hurts and you miss everybody you used to know, and everyone who's younger than you (which is to say, pretty much everyone) starts looking at you for advice, not because you have any more idea what you're doing than you did when you were twenty, but just because you're old and that qualifies you for wisdom somehow.

Well. Maybe he does know a _little_ more than he did when he was twenty. And if he does, it's mostly down to the woman lying under this gravestone right here.

Jack leans down carefully from his wheelchair to put the flowers he picked out on Peggy Carter's grave. He brought her roses because he knows, once upon a time, it would've pissed her off. Red and white roses. He would've thrown in some blue ones, but they don't seem to make those, even in a world with superheroes and aliens and God knows what else.

He glances around. Kenzie, his granddaughter, wandered off through the graveyard after he asked her to give him some time. Now she's sitting on the edge of a tomb, doing something with her phone. She's a good kid -- hell, _kid_ ; she's thirty-four and junior CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Still a kid though. He was just starting to figure things out at that age.

He missed the actual funeral because of a combination of bowel surgery and an emergency top-security-level conference (from his hospital bed, goddammit, because age may come with wisdom but it sure doesn't come with dignity) with the idiots drafting the Sokovia Accords, since he's the only surviving member of the original founding members of SHIELD, albeit not a particularly important one.

He can see where they're coming from with the Accords. From a certain point of view, it makes sense. He also thinks anybody who lived through what he lived through in the 1940s couldn't possibly _not_ see that it's a stupid idea that's going to end badly. Told 'em so. Didn't listen to him, but that's kids for you.

He also thinks Steve Rogers is an absolute fucking certified idiot to go up against the combined might of black-ops SHIELD and most of the world's governments to protect a friend (speaking of things that can't possibly end well), but it does give him more insight than he's ever had before into what must've drawn Peggy to Mr. Star-Spangled Underwear, once upon a time, when the world was new and all of them were young and dumb and still thought that dying a hero was a sensible decision all around.

A shadow falls over the grave. Jack glances up. Another damn kid come to bother him, but at least he thinks this one probably isn't here for advice.

"Paying respects?" Jack asks.

"Same as you," Nick Fury says gravely. He's wearing what he probably thinks is an impenetrable disguise, sunglasses and a flat-brimmed cap pulled low over his eyes, which to Jack screams "spy trying to blend in." On the other hand, maybe it's not that obvious to someone who hasn't been in the espionage game for over 70 years.

"So what do you go by these days?" Jack asks, folding his hands in his lap over the blanket that his granddaughter wrapped him up in. He hates how cold he gets these days, even in the heat of the sun. "Not Director Fury, I'm guessing. Nick? Nicky? Nikita? Was your name ever even Fury to begin with? Sounds fake to me."

"Anybody ever tell you you're an asshole?" Fury says after a moment.

"Better men than you, sir." Jack flicks his glance at the grave. "And better women."

Fury gives him a quick, lopsided grin, the respectful salute of one Grade-A asshole recognizing another of the tribe. For a little while they both regard Peggy's grave, just two old men in the sun. (Jack figures Fury must be pushing seventy by now, not that the man will admit it, but he knows how that is.)

"Don't know about you, but on some fucking level, I always thought she'd outlive us all," Fury says at last.

"Yeah, well, some of us don't die when we're supposed to. Damn shame, ain't it."

Fury gives him a look from behind the sunglasses. 

Jack takes a quick look around for Kenzie, but he can't see her. Probably wandered off to take pictures of gravestones with her phone for MyTwitFace or whatever the kids are doing nowadays. Then again, Fury probably wouldn't have showed himself if she'd still been around, with this stupid ninja crap he's trying to pull.

The odd thought occurs to Jack that, while every single person who knew the Okinawa story (all two of them) is now dead, Fury almost certainly wouldn't care even if he did know. By Fury's standards, the incident that overshadowed Jack's entire young life and drove the direction of his fate is small potatoes, an innocent relic of an antique world. Spycraft is a dark and dangerous game with a billion shades of gray, and Fury came of age in it.

For the first time, the thought also occurs to him to wonder if Peggy had her own Okinawa equivalents, over the years.

Maybe they had more in common in her waning years than he ever guessed.

But like so many other things, she took that secret with her to her grave.

Must be crowded in there, he thinks. Peggy Goddamn Carter and a million fucking secrets.

"You ever wonder if there was any point to any of it?" he asks, his gaze resting on Peggy's headstone with the red and white roses patriotically gleaming against the gray marble. He should've planted something permanent, some kind of rose to twine over her headstone for years to come. She deserved that. 

"You ever wonder," he goes on, talking to himself more than to Fury, "if anything we did made any difference, or if all we did was muddle through just so we can get old and obsolete and watch the kids find whole new ways to fuck up?"

Peggy was always so _sure._ She carried other people along with her own certainty. Now that she's gone, the doubts are creeping in. All the things they did, the compromises they made, the decisions that seemed right at the time ... how many other, better decisions could they have made if they hadn't been just as blinded by their convictions as these Sokovia Accords idiots, as Rogers, as everyone these days who just seems to never learn a damn thing from all the history that Jack and his compatriots spent their lives making ...?

"You're asking _me_ for advice?" Fury says. "You realize I'm legally dead and technically homeless, right? Also, you're old as balls; shouldn't I be asking you?"

Jack flips him off. At least his middle finger is one of the few remaining parts of his body that still works right.

There's another silence, filled with the rustle of leaves and the whisper of grasses and the distant sound of traffic. Jack glimpses Kenzie at last, way down behind some carved stone angels, looking at grass.

"You know, Thompson, I think the kids are gonna be okay," Fury says slowly. "They're gonna fuck up just like we did. Make stupid decisions, like we did. Make their own mistakes. Try to clean up their own messes and make things worse."

"Just like we did," Jack echoes, thinking of a jungle on Tsuken Island that's probably, hell, some kind of luxury resort now. Mermaid statues and that kind of thing.

"Yeah, just like that." And now Fury grins. "It's their God-given right as young damn idiots, just like we were. You fought in a war that some old assholes made you fight. So did I, except the old assholes were you and Carter and the rest of your generation."

There is a part of him that wants to protest Vietnam wasn't his fucking fault, but then, he's pretty sure anybody he asked back in 1947 over the age of 30 would've said the second world war wasn't theirs either. God knows Kenzie's kids will probably someday claim that they had nothing to do with whatever colossal fuckup _their_ kids are trying to wade out of.

"Point is," Fury says, "eventually you just hand it over to the kids and accept that all you can do is watch them be idiots and try to argue them out of it, and they won't listen any more than you listened to the people who tried to tell you what an idiot you were fifty years ago."

"Is that why you stepped down as director? 'cause nobody listened to you anymore?"

Fury barks a sharp laugh. "You call it stepping down; I call it getting shot a shitload of times with high-caliber weapons."

"Anyway," Jack says, "the point is, I can tell you're totally out of the spy game these days. Not pulling a single string or pushing one lone button. Just letting the kids make their own fuckups all on their own."

"God damn. How'd you make it to the age of ninety-fucking-whatever without anyone shooting _you?"_

Jack taps his chest. "They tried."

"Huh. Never knew that. Welcome to the club."

The spies who outlived their usefulness and just went on living club, Jack thinks, but he's not quite prepared to say it. For one thing, every time he thinks he's out of the game, something pulls him back in. For a lot of years, that "something" was Peggy Carter. Now she's dead, but somehow he thinks that she's not really gone, not as long as all the seeds she planted in a lot of people's heads are still alive and growing and doing whatever damage they're going to do. Pulling people back in, long after they might've gone on to something else.

"Hey," Jack says suddenly. "You ever want to come over on Sundays, my grandson Michael makes a damn good roast. "

Fury's laugh is sudden and startled. 

"That's a standing invitation," Jack adds, "but better take me up on it quick, since I am, as you kindly reminded me, ninety-something and don't expect to be around much longer. Also, I figure I don't need to give you an address, since you're a superspy and all that."

"Asshole."

"Never claimed otherwise. But it's the least the older generation can do, after throwing you into a war and all that."

"What, invite me over for Sunday dinner?"

"There's one thing I do remember about being a full-time spy with no goddamn ties to anywhere," Jack says, "and that's how much a Sunday dinner is worth, sometimes."

Fury doesn't say anything, and when Jack looks up, he's gone, as if he was never there except for the quickly-vanishing imprint of footprints on the grass beside Peggy's grave. And then Kenzie appears, walking out from under the shadows of the oaks.

"Grandpa," she says, "I know you want time with your old friend, but ... you know Cousin Jason's expecting us soon."

"Just lost track of the time, I guess," he says, letting her tuck the blanket up for the short trip back to the car. Jason is Peggy and Daniel's grandson in London ... a cousin, for all intents and purposes, to Jack Jr. and Nattie's kids. Funny how these things end up working out, some of the time.

The wheelchair jolts as Kenzie starts to push him across the grass. "I'm really sorry about your friend, Grandpa," she says, with the heartfelt sincerity of someone who hasn't yet learned what it's like to lose everyone who knew about your stupid, youthful mistakes and loved you anyway.

"Me too, honey," he tells her, pulling the blanket closer around himself. "Me too."

**Author's Note:**

> "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain" is a Batman quote. I figure the MCU has DC comics and movies, and vice versa.


End file.
